


Rain

by what_on_io



Category: Red Dwarf
Genre: Cuddles, Established Relationship, Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, One-Shot, and many-legged monsters, cows are referenced quite a lot, no actual monsters though, rimmer doesn't like rain
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-28
Updated: 2014-02-28
Packaged: 2018-01-14 01:04:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,773
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1246909
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/what_on_io/pseuds/what_on_io
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The rain was always the thing that got to him the most. Growing up on Io, Rimmer hadn't had much experience with it. So, listening the sound of water drumming on the tin roof, he found he couldn't sleep.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Rain

**Author's Note:**

> Wow, so this is my first post for this fandom in a very long time. Apologies if this is OOC in parts, I tried to avoid it. Unbeta'd, as usual, and I typed this up on my iPad so any pointing out of errors would be greatly appreciated, as well as constructive crit and wonderful comments :)

The thing that got to him most was the rain. Growing up on Io, Rimmer hadn’t had much experience with it - since plants were grown in laboratories, they hadn't bothered to simulate the condition in the artificial atmosphere bubbles on the moon. What brief experience he had with rain came from watching vids and the showers he'd gotten caught in on shore leave on Earth.

So, listening to the sound of water drumming on the tin roof of the - well, you couldn't really call it anything but a shack - that they'd built, Rimmer found that he couldn't sleep. He couldn't help but feel like something was trying to get in - maybe some kind of giant insect that was burrowing down through the roof with all twenty of its legs.

On more than one occasion he'd wriggled out of the cocoon of Lister's arms and stolen out into the night, not daring to glance back at the shack in case he glimpsed the nightmare-insect about to eat his partner alive, and gone to sleep in Starbug. _Coward,_ he'd chastise himself afterwards, when morning came with no sign of a killer creature, _it was just rain. And if it_ was _something else, and you'd left Lister there to face it on his own?_

But Rimmer had never claimed to be anything but a coward, and each morning with guilt churning his stomach, he'd slink back to his shared bed with Lister and act as if nothing had happened. Once he'd even greeted his lover with a coffee, waking him with a gentle shake and offering the mug to him - slipping back under the covers before Lister had the chance to feel how cold his side of the bed was.

This couldn't go on, Rimmer knew, or else he'd be mad in a fortnight. Even when it wasn't raining on this godforsaken planetoid - although, it seemed to Rimmer that nine times out of ten, it was - there were other noises to keep him awake at night - the chirping of some native bird, the creaking of the shack in the wind, the rattling of the makeshift windows. At least on Starbug, the clanging pipes and engine noises were familiar. Non-threatening. He'd go down to their old bunkroom where he could no longer hear the rain, and bury himself beneath a mountain of blankets, imagining Lister curled up beside him there.

He wished they'd never found the place. He wished he'd offered to take Lister's shift so he would have been the one monitoring the console when the scanners detected the lone planetoid - zero life forms, breathable atmosphere, Earth-like climate. Perfect to land and set up camp.

He'd thought it was temporary, at first, when the four of them were still sleeping in Starbug and only venturing out onto the planetoid by day to explore the lush greenery growing between short stretches of desert land, searching for food and water sources, fuel depositaries, supplies that some long-extinct race might have left behind. They'd found a few fruits growing in the woodland area behind the spot where they'd parked Starbug that had shown up as safe for human consumption on the scanners. Rimmer wasn't entirely sure why they were bothering - there were enough food supplies on the ship to sustain them for a few months, and surely they weren't going to stay _that_ long.

* * *

 It turned out, of course, that months wasn't what Lister had in mind. What Lister had in mind was more like _years._ Rimmer had confronted him in the bunkroom the night Lister proposed building a more permanent home, fully aware that he was being utterly selfish and trying to cushion the blow for his lover's sake.

"Lister, just how long exactly do you plan to spend here?" Rimmer had asked through gritted teeth, and Lister had shrugged from where he reclined on his bunk, flicking absently through one of his engineering textbooks, a picture of nonchalance. He didn't seem to be taking much notice of the way Rimmer had taken to pacing the room, hands gesticulating wildly as he spoke.

"I dunno, love, why? Don't you like it?" Lister asked, flipping a page so noisily it made Rimmer's nostrils twitch.

"Don't I...? No, it's great. It's just smegging _wonderful_ , Lister, out here on this barren planetoid with no company except a certain narcissistic feline and a service-droid. Smegging _wonderful._ At least on Starbug we have the space weevils if we fancy an intelligent conversation!"

"Arn, love, it's the same as it always has been, only now we aren't stuck on a tiny ship where we can't escape if we get on each other's nerves! It's _warm_ and you can go outside whenever you feel like it and feel the suns on your face... " And Rimmer got it, then; understood that this planetoid was probably as close as Lister was ever going to get to Fiji now. He sucked in a sharp, unnecessary breath and released it, turning to squint at Lister as if seeing his face for the first time.

"Okay," he'd murmured, because he was definitely _not_ Kristine Kochanski and Lister definitely hadn't imagined it would ever be _Rimmer_ raising livestock with him in Fiji, and because Rimmer had _flinched_ , honest-to-God flinched, the first (well, second) time Lister had told him he loved him, waiting for a punchline that never came.

Lister abandoned his textbook on the bunk and reached out a hand to interlace his fingers with Rimmer's, gently tugging him closer and snaking both arms around Rimmer's thighs, the only part of him he could reach whilst sitting on the lower bed. It hadn't taken much persuasion for Rimmer to be reduced to an incoherent, quaking mess as he came undone beneath Lister's fingertips, and soon enough the argument - if you could call it that - was forgotten.

* * *

 If Rimmer hadn't been completely adverse to remaining on the planetoid at first, he certainly was now. Not that he'd say anything, of course, not even to Kryten, who had taken to taking long, ambling strolls across the landscape, whistling to himself, when there was nothing better to be done. Silently, Rimmer wondered if he'd gone crazy, too.

His only real problem at first, Rimmer told himself, was that he felt the need to _create_ problems from nothing. There hadn't been much that was particularly _wrong_ about the planetoid apart from the awful thought of what might be lurking underground, undetected by the scanners, and the fact that it felt jarringly unfamiliar compared to the comfortable decks of Red Dwarf or the cramped living quarters of Starbug. It didn't feel much like home, not like the shared bunk-room did. _But it will,_ Rimmer reminded himself. He told himself that things would be better once they settled in, once the shack was more structurally sound and wind didn't wail through the cracks in the walls. It wasn't as if he and Lister were apart - they had their own shared room, with the Cat residing in his very own quarters next door. Kryten had insisted on constructing what couldn't be described as more than a linen closet for himself, which Lister had long since given up on protesting against. They'd moved the spare mattresses from Starbug to the floor of their room, two singles pressed up against each other, and carted piles of blankets up into the shack to keep out the draught. Lister said it felt like home as soon as he'd consumed his first curry lying back against the pillows.

For Rimmer, it was proving much more difficult. Even disregarding the rain, and the fact that he could no longer bear to spend the entire night curled up against Lister's side, the planetoid seemed to be constantly cold, constantly windy, and constantly bare. He'd assumed, with the two suns burning overhead and given their relative distance from the planet's surface, that sometimes Lister's feet wouldn't feel like ice when they pressed up against his calves in the middle of the night. Although temperature didn't have much of an effect on him, being a hologram, it didn't mean he enjoyed having what were surely icicles jabbed into the back of his knees on a daily basis.

Still. He could endure it, for his lover's sake. It wasn't _that_ bad, all things considered. They had a lot more time on their hands now, and neither of them had to leave the safety of their bed to take a shift in the Drive Room at three a.m. They could walk, arm in arm, without a particular destination in mind, and push each other up against tree trunks for a round of aimless snogging on the way to collect fresh water from the stream in the forest. It was... comfortable.

But then there was the rain, and here Rimmer was again, protected by a mountain of blankets on his old bunk, knees tucked up to his chin. He sighed, allowing his eyes to flicker shut after checking his alarm was set for five the next morning. He liked to leave plenty of time to return to Lister's side after his nightly episodes - it wouldn't do for Lister to find him here, curled up in a tight ball, pretty much the most pathetic, self-centered, cowardly excuse for a boyfriend that had ever existed in all of history.

Rimmer fell asleep facing the wall, pretending Lister's body was pressed up against his own in the dark.

* * *

 Rimmer woke with a start, his eyes flying open to be met only by the wall and the still-pristine revision timetable he'd tacked up there, back when he was still intent on passing his Astronavs, back before he had something better to concentrate on. His attention flew to his watch - it was only twenty past three. What had woken him so suddenly? Was something... Oh, God, had something crawled its way onto Starbug, ready to eat him alive?!

Rimmer sat bolt upright, gaze turning to survey the room. No twenty-legged monster with blood oozing from its gaping jaws, no red eyes blinking at him through the darkness, just... Lister, slumped in a chair across from the bunk, sound asleep with his head resting on his shoulder, snoring.

"Lister?" Rimmer whispered into the semi-darkness, "Listy?"

The shadowy figure in the chair snorted a final snore and coughed a little, before Lister's eyes fluttered open and groggily met Rimmer's gaze.

"Oh. You're awake," Lister stated, eyes narrowing a touch. Accusatory. Rimmer winced, wondering how much he'd managed to work out and what exactly he planned to do about it.

"Listy, I'm sorry, I-"

To Rimmer's surprise, Lister doesn't ask _how long_ or _what the smeg do you think you're doing_ , but, "Why didn't you talk to me?" Rimmer assumes he already knows the rest.

"I didn't think you realised," Rimmer muttered, purposely avoiding the question. Lister sighed.

"Of course I realised, man. I didn't know where you went every night - I supposed ya just went for a walk, clearin' yer head or somethin', but I kept wakin' up and you weren't there, an'- I panicked. Worried. So I followed you."

"I'm sorry," Rimmer repeated, hanging his head so that he didn't have to look his lover in the eyes any longer. If Lister was going to end things with him, he'd rather he'd just come out and _say_ it, dammit, rather than sitting here and chatting as if they're not only still friends, but still in a romantic relationship. Lister was worried about him. About _him. Rimmer._ He wondered if he'd underestimated Lister's romantic capabilities, because he was actually starting to make it sound as if Rimmer was actually the one he wanted, and not just some tool for getting over Kochanski.

Not that Rimmer would protest if he was.

"You could have talked to me, love," Lister said. _Love._ He'd always assumed it slipped out; something Lister referred to all his sexual partners as. The three words themselves had often made an appearance, too, but Rimmer had never really considered their implications before, not beyond Lister using them to get a leg over, which, honestly, didn't always seem like his intention.

"I just- This is what you want. Living here. A home. Somewhere to settle down and breed horses and have children and I-" Rimmer had to take a deep breath to steady himself before he could choke out the next words, "-I can't give that to you."

Lister stopped breathing for a worrying moment during which Rimmer had to clench his fists in his lap to keep from reaching out and shaking the man to check he was still alive. Eventually, after too long a silence, Lister opened his mouth to speak.

A shaky, whispered _Arn_ was all that he managed to choke out, and Rimmer wondered if this was what it must feel like to have your heart break.

"Love, there's nothing I want more than you. _Nothing._ Not this smegging planetoid, not the stupid shack or a herd of cows or horses or Fiji or Krissie or _anything_ , d'you hear me? Rimmer, there's nothing more important than you are to me, okay?"

Rimmer reasoned that he must be dreaming, because there was absolutely no way that those words had come from Lister's mouth. There was no _way_ that David Lister had just admitted that there was something he wanted more than Kristine Kochanski, and there was _no way in hell_ that that something was _him, Arnold Rimmer_ , of all the people.

"Eh, I must be gettin' soppy in my old age," Lister muttered when Rimmer said nothing, clapping a hand on Rimmer's knee. Rimmer roused himself enough to mumble a weak 'nothing's changed there, then' in response, but his voice was thready.

"Just don't- never doubt how much I want ya, Arn. You come first, not some stupid delusion I had about settling down on Fiji ten years ago. I bet Kryten and the Cat are itching to get away, too - Kryten's not had anything to clean in weeks," Lister chuckled, leaning in to press a kiss to Rimmer's forehead, just above the H that resided there. Rimmer's lips curled up into an involuntary smile as Lister patted his knee once more.

"Let's get some sleep here for tonight, and we'll tell them in the morning. That okay?"

"Mmm," Rimmer hummed, and yanked Lister down by his wrist into their bunk so they lay spoon-like. He sighed contentedly as he felt his lover ghosting kisses along his neck, closing his eyes.

"Love you," Lister said sleepily, his words somewhat muffled by Rimmer's skin.

"I love you too, Listy," Rimmer replied in a murmur, for the first time. The words, instead of feeling unfamiliar on his tongue, rolled comfortably from his lips, and they fell asleep with identical smiles twitching at their mouths.

* * *

The next day, everything from the shack was packed up and ready to go, the corrugated metal stripped from the roof and boarded up in Starbug under Lister's insistence that it could come in handy for repairs. Barely any trace remained that they'd ever been on the planetoid - a few apple cores that lay abandoned on the ground, a splintered plank of wood that had split from the shack's doorway, and a couple of frozen food wrappers that they'd been too tired to chase down. Lister surveyed the landscape one last time, trying not to feel sentimental as he boarded Starbug's steps. The others were already seated in the Drive Room, eager to get away as quickly as possible. As predicted, Kryten had been practically sobbing with relief at the thought of finally having a substantial space to scrub and tidy again, and even the Cat looked cheered at the prospect of a few more daily showers.

Lister glanced at his other half before making his way to his console. Rimmer had avoided his eyes since his whispered confession last night, as if he expected Lister to take it all back. _Wouldn't be the first time_ , a voice in his head reminded him, and Lister did his best to shut it out. There was no room for neuroses, his or Rimmer's, in their relationship now. The thought made him smile. He was glad they'd sorted some things out, at least. They'd talked, briefly, that morning, and although Rimmer hadn't brought up the L word, the fact that he trusted Lister enough now to divulge that he hated the rain because they'd never had it on Io, was enough.

And maybe Lister was getting soppy, because he leaned across Rimmer's console to snog his lover senseless in front of both the Cat and Kryten, but he decided he didn't much care.


End file.
